Not Applicable
Not Applicable
1. Field of Invention
a) This invention relates to a device for making available to animals predetermined quantities of food at predetermined times.
2. Description of Prior Art
Pet owners increasingly consider their pets to be members of the family, and as such, desire to maintain their pets at a high standard of health and happiness. Pet nutrition is recognized as a significant part of pet maintenance. The abundance of premium brand and specialized diet pet foods now available are proof of pet owners increasing desire to control the quality of their pet""s nutrition. However, when confronted with controlling the quantity of food and frequency of feeding, pet owners presently have unsatisfactory choices.
The basic method for controlling a pets nutrition is for the owner or a caregiver to personally feed a pet measured quantities of food one or more times daily. This is often not practical or convenient given many pet owners busy, irregular or unpredictable schedules. Additionally, since the pet associates the owner with providing food, implementing a diet often results in ignescent begging by the pet. These disadvantages may cause the pet owner to abandon their pet""s diet program and resort to free feeding. Also, if the pet owner must be away from home for several or more days, supplying nutrition to their pet involves finding trustworthy care in the form of a pet sitter or kennel. Such situations will very likely result in disruption of the diet program, stress to the pet and monetary costs; all of which are undesirable.
Thus there exists the need for a reliable device for dispensing predictable predetermined quantities of pet food at predetermined times and capable of substantially autonomous operation. There are numerous prior art disclosures of automatic animal feeders in this area of animal husbandry. However, the prior art has not offered a solution that is fundamentally:
(a) convenient and easy to use, clean and maintain
(b) operationally reliable to the point that a pet owner can trust that their pet or pets are properly fed while unattended, even for extended periods of time.
The majority of previously proposed inventions commonly disclose a hopper for storing a large amount of flowable dry animal food, a mechanical means of dispensing a quantity of the animal food from the hopper and a receptacle or bowl for receiving the food where it becomes available to the animal. For the most part, it is only the means of urging or dispensing the animal food from the hopper and conveying it to the bowl that differentiates these prior art examples.
Some, as illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,794,560 and 6,196,158 respectively, disclose means to open an orifice in the bottom of the food storage hopper and thus allow gravity to urge the food from the hopper. Other inventions utilize gravity in cooperation with a discharge assistant mechanism to dispense or convey animal food from an opening in the bottom of the hopper. Some employ a mechanically driven auger member as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,401,657, and 6,135,056. Others employ an agitating or rotating member as in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,513,688 and 4,292,930.
These methods benefit from being adaptable to timer-controlled operation. They all, however, suffer from the likelihood of trapping or pinching food particles within the biasing or scissoring elements of their respective discharge or urging mechanisms. This results in crushing of the food, jamming of the mechanism or both. This likelihood of the dispensing or urging mechanisms in these prior art disclosures becoming partially or completely inoperative and unable to reliably dispense nutrition to an animal makes them untrustworthy and unacceptable to a caring pet owner. Additionally, many of these disclosures comprise areas within the unit that are difficult to access for cleaning and therefore present sanitation risks due to the inevitable buildup of fine particulate and residue within the units disclosed.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,227,143 and 4,722,300 disclose animal feeders that utilize a vibrating trough or chute located beneath an opening in the bottom of the hopper to urge food to a receptacle. While this solution reduces the likelihood of jamming the mechanism or crushing the food, it is nearly incapable of dispensing predictable, consistent, predetermined quantities of food.
Another common disadvantage of all the afore mentioned prior art is a propensity of the flowable animal food within the hopper to bridge above their relatively small or narrow discharge orifices. This can result in little or no food being dispensed making them an unreliable option.
Many of the prior art disclosures also suffer from a number of other disadvantages:
(a) They are prone to accidental discharge of food by the jostling or tipping over of the unit by a determined hungry animal.
(b) They do not provide for a way to feed more then one animal with a single unit.
(c) In addition to setting a timer mechanism, the operator (pet owner or caregiver) is required to make other complex manual adjustments to the device.
(d) They present numerous safety risks for both pets and people due to the accessibility of operating mechanisms.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,150,664 and 5,265,560 disclose animal feeders that store multiple single servings of animal food in separate compartments within the unit that are made available to the animal at predetermined intervals. These disclosures do not suffer many of the disadvantages of the prior art heretofore discussed such as propensity to jam or bridge, or from being difficult to clean. They also have the advantage of being able to provide an animal with moist or semi moist food, or liquid, in addition to dry animal food. They are, however, less convenient since they require the pet owner or caregiver to pre-measure each serving and place it in individual compartments. This, combined with the relatively small number of servings the units are capable of storing, make these prior art disclosures less desirable for continuous diet control or impracticable for longer periods of unattended feeding.
Accordingly, several objects and advantages of the present invention are to provide an animal feeding device of superior trustworthiness and convenience for dispensing animal food that:
(a) provides superior resistance to malfunction or becoming inoperative due to food particulate becoming trapped, pinched or jammed within the feeder;
(b) is very unlikely to crush or pulverize food particles;
(c) provides superior resistance to bridging of the flowable food stored within the hopper;
(d) provides for superior sanitation through ease of cleaning and maintenance by providing convenient access to all surfaces with which the food comes in contact;
(e) consistently dispenses the correct predetermined amounts of animal food that the pet owner or caregiver desires;
(f) is capable of storing a large amount of flowable animal food;
(g) once filled with animal food and set or programmed by the pet owner with the desired food quantities and feeding intervals, is capable of trustworthy autonomous operation over an extended period of time;
(h) because the pet associates the device and not the owner with providing food, reduces ignescent begging that can result from the implementation of a diet program
(i) does not require manual manipulation or adjustments of the dispensing mechanism by the owner in order to regulate the quantity of food dispensed;
(j) provides superior safety for pets and people alike;
(k) due to its highly reliable and largely autonomous operation, can provide some people who would not normally be as capable of pet ownership i.e. the elderly, disabled, or handicapped, the opportunity to maintain a pet in their home.
Other objects and advantages are to provide an animal feeding device offering superior resistance to the discharge of food if the feeder is jostled, which can optionally be removably attached to a wall or other stable surface so as to resist accidental discharge or being tipped over, which can be modified to feed more than one animal, which provides a battery back-up that allows the feeder to operate during a loss of power to the unit. All objects and advantages combine to provide a pet or animal owner with a reliable device to conveniently control the diet of their pet or animal. And in doing so, enhance their pet""s health, avoid costs incurred by unhealthy overweight pets, and some or all of the costs of providing care when the pet owner is away from home for extended periods of time. Still other objects and advantages will become apparent from a consideration of the ensuing description and drawings.
In accordance with the present invention a device for dispensing flowable preferably dry animal food comprising a hopper for storing a volume of the intended animal food, a discharge passage or aperture in the bottom of the hopper, a directing structure arranged within the hopper that creates a void within the stored food and around the discharge aperture and into which the stored food is inhibited from freely flowing. The device further comprises an urging member arranged to urge the food adjacent the void into the void and into the discharge aperture after which the food is directed to a receptacle or bowl where the food is then available for consumption.